Minecraft PS4 Edition Review – Better With a Couch (PS4)

September 10, 2014
Written by Dyani Wood

For whatever reason, some people hate sandbox games. I am not one of those people. I love the freedom to imagine any possibility within a world and make it happen. Minecraft is the ultimate sandbox game, and it is delivered to console gamers very well in Minecraft PlayStation 4 Edition.

I love when great games get ported all over the place. As many people as possible should have access and exposure to these games. Minecraft has proven its greatness in many past versions and now finally comes to PS4. If you’ve never played it or are confused about why a game with seemingly horrible graphics could be so fun, now is your chance to dig in and try it. If you’ve never even played a sandbox game that has such a vast open world, you should also try it, even if you think you won’t like it. I really think once you learn the basics of Minecraft via the really impressive and fun tutorial world, you can find something to love about it; something to entertain you within Minecraft. For some people, it’s travelling to and conquering the Nether world and reaching The End. Some set out to survive in the wilds and build their Minecraft life from nothing into grand feats of crafting. For me, it’s building houses and finding villagers to take care of. There are so many intricacies in the game that you constantly learn some new crafting method or some secret that alters your plans. Minecraft never feels stagnant.

In fact, Minecraft is like LEGOs combined with a survival game such as Don’t Starve. You can build whatever you can imagine, or you can just test yourself and survive, depending on your gaming style. You can build complex, elaborate mazelike mines which often reveal lava and other existing cave networks. Monsters spawn in darkness at night, so you have to figure out how to make enough sources of light to illuminate places you don’t want infested with monsters. Monsters also harm villagers if your world has spawned a village, so you can choose to help the community thrive by strengthening the village defenses with lights, fences, and friendly golems you have to create yourself. Villagers can trade with you and provide useful resources. So many more things happen in the world, boredom is rare in this game.

Minecraft PS4 Edition gives you controls that translate very well from the PC release. Using the controller, instead of a keyboard and mouse, feels very natural. Looking and moving around the world is, in a way, easier on console than PC. The analog sticks help with that. I wish this game was available in 3D, because the world looks really great when you’re playing on a big screen. You can tweak a handful of settings when you generate a world that add to the feeling of endless possibilities Minecraft is famous for. You can spawn a bonus chest in the beginning to help you along at first, if you want. You can change the “mode” of the game from survival to creative mode, which is the ultimate Minecraft artist’s canvas. You can choose from various sizes of worlds, or choose to generate a completely flat world. You can set the difficulty level per world you generate, too.

If you want to play with friends, you can host an online world and invite friends, or you can play split-screen co-op and have a friend or three turn on a controller and instantly hop into your game. There is real value in this mode. It was really fun to have a friend right next to me hop in and come exploring with me. That’s a really unique part of playing Minecraft on the PS4 that differs from PC. Having controllers in your hands and sharing a screen with a buddy in the comfort of your home is an experience I will want to repeat. There’s no couch co-op quite like Minecraft’s. You could spend hours just running around together exploring with the intent of finding something to do. Use each other as walking storage chests, making mining trips much faster and fruitful. You could even create elaborate, extremely challenging versions of capture the flag. You might get lost for most of the game, but that makes it fun and crazy! You could play hide and seek, have competitions for who can build [insert anything here] faster, or just help each other build whatever you desire.

Another very important feature of Minecraft is included in this PS4 edition, and adds exponential amounts of fun to this game: seeding. “Seeds” are the basis of an algorithm for random world generation. Usage of a specific seed will guarantee a specific world to spawn based on the normally pseudo-random algorithm used to generate new worlds. A quick Google search will turn up tons and tons of seeds, if you are opposed to trying to make it in a random world. In addition to seeds, people create some really satisfying worlds with lots of temples, caves, biome types (jungle, desert, snow etc.), and custom masterpieces. If you get bored of one world, just go find another one online. There are some really impressive seeds out there. Skin packs and texture packs shake up the experience even further, providing a fun way to add interest to the game, and they’re pretty affordable too. If you have kids, they will enjoy the different looks you can give the world and the character skins you can choose. Many of the skins give homage to famous PS4 characters from beloved titles like Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet and Clank.

Minecraft PS4 Edition is a tried-and-true game in a solid console format. Couch co-op is extremely fun and easy to jump into, — it’s like the video game version of the perfect playground. It’s a game unlike any other for the PS4. Countless activities await you, and you never know what could happen. Dig in, and watch out for creepers!